Evolution, Ecology and Biodiversity

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Versión en español aquí When I was a small kid, I loved to watch animal documentaries in Animal Planet. We wouldn’t always have cable TV at home, but I clearly remember a particular day in which we finally had it installed. The only thing I wanted to watch was an Animal Planet documentary, and…

Versión en español aquí I had to teach the basics of morphological data analysis in R in a classroom for a small workshop. While preparing the material it was proposed to me that students could collect their own data (it was possible to find a relatively good number of lizards, insects, and plants nearby). I…

Black Mustard Brassica nigra Flowers–Bright yellow, fading pale…. Preferred Habitat–Roadsides, fields, neglected gardens. Flowering Season–June–November. Distribution–Common throughout our area; naturalized from Europe and Asia. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds; but when…

Versión en español aquí More than 2 months ago me and some colleagues got a paper published in which we described parallel ontogenetic changes in the diet and head morphology of a lizard, specifically a herbivorous lizard (at least as an adult, as you will see). I decided it is not too late to write…

Versión en español aquí As the title says, this is a totally subjective list of my favorite papers. I’m of course biased in terms of subjects and authors because of my own field of study and interests. But how does a paper get into my list of favorites? The requirements are: How much they motivated…

Versión en español aquí When starting to write this post I wanted to give a small introduction to the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), because this post is in part based on that analysis. However, it might be better for you to review it by yourself if you need to. As for any other statistical method…

On the first night we camped in the Ghor el Feifeh, and from the 17th to the 26th inclusive we were detained at the Ghor es Safieh while waiting for means of transport from Jerusalem. This enforced delay in so unique a locality was to me a most fortunate circumstance. Previous visitors do not appear to have…

Versión en español aquí To directly explore the tropidurinae morphospace I created go here After reading the newest paper by Pianka et al (2017), which basically summarizes ecological data collected for lizards across entire lifetimes of field work (Pianka’s and Vitt’s, specifically) I got inspired by the interactive way they showed (in the supplemental materials)…

Versión en español aquí Many times people relate me with lizards. When they see a picture, a video, or even if they see one face to face, dead or alive, they ask me for the species ID. The truth is that I know almost nothing about lizards that is not in an evolutionary context. I…

Versión en español aquí A popular myth relates “evolution” with strictly long time periods, thousands or millions of years. This is understandable given that the most popular examples (dinosaurs – birds, Australopithecus – Homo sapiens) are those in which big changes needed a lot of time to “transform” a living being into a totally different…

…the fishes of the Bahamas are not only useful for food, but also as an attraction to the many visitors to the Islands. Their beauty in life, as they swim to and from among the sea fans and corals, is indescribable, and one never tires looking through the water bucket with glass bottom, or better…

The English version of this post was originally published in Anole Annals and can be found here. La Evolución de la Diversidad Morfológica en Tropidurines: La Influencia del Hábitat Fui lo suficientemente afortunado como para tener la oportunidad de trabajar algunos meses en el Museo de Zoología Comparativa de la Universidad de Harvard como parte…